USPS considers closing Kansas City, Kan., facility

Wednesday

Jun 27, 2007 at 12:01 AMJun 27, 2007 at 7:58 PM

United States Postal Service officials are holding a public hearing at 7 p.m. June 27 at the Jack Reardon Convention Center to receive public comment about the potential closing of a Kansas City, Kan., USPS facility.

Sam Hartle

United States Postal Service officials are holding a public hearing at 7 p.m. June 27 at the Jack Reardon Convention Center to receive public comment about the potential closing of a Kansas City, Kan., USPS facility.

The Kansas City Processing and Distribution Center, 5215 Richland Ave., might be shut down and its operations transferred to a new USPS facility in Kansas City, Mo.

A press release about the public hearing says that a 2005 study indicated the potential that “consolidating some mail processing operations that are currently being performed at the Kansas City, KS P&DC by taking advantage of available processing capacity at the Kansas City, MO P&DC, would increase efficiency and improve productivity.”

Richard Watkins, a USPS spokesman, said moving operations from Kansas City, Kan., to Kansas City, Mo. would make “a good business case.”

“We’ve got a relatively new facility in Kansas City, Mo.,” he said. “The facility in Kansas City, Kan., is old and spread out over multiple floors.”

The KCK facility employs 301 people, and while some will be displaced, either through cuts or lack of availability, Watkins says the majority of employees would be rotated to the Kansas City, Mo., office at 1700 Cleveland Ave.

Watkins says the postal service, which has historically relied on first-class stamped mail for revenue, has seen a decrease in the volume of that type of mail, thus reducing the need for older, less efficient locations.

The postal service has leased the 105,000-square-foot building in KCK since 1985.

“Our business model hasn’t changed since the Nixon administration,” Watkins said Monday, describing the realignment of postal service operations that is affecting other locations across the country.

Watkins added that if officials move forward with the realignment, postal service customers in the Kansas City area would likely see no changes in service quality.

“The degradation to service would be extremely limited,” he said.

The release says that no final decision has been made on the facility, though Watkins said that officials would likely make a decision sometime in the next 60 days.